Cold Feet
by bingsrule
Summary: As her wedding day approaches, Rachel starts to have doubts. Post-Finale. RRJ. Chapter one has some Mondler mush.


I had this idea and wanted to write it, it is my only non-Mondler centric story, but I am trying to make it as much about Mondler as possible since that is really what I like to write. It's NOT for diehard R/R fans. Read and review.

This is set approximately sixteen months after the finale. Joey has moved out to California. Chandler and Monica live in Westchester and Ross and Rachel still live in the city and are getting married in a week.

_Disclaimer: I don't own them. Oh and I **really** don't understand the new rating system, so sorry if it's rated wrong._

* * *

The wedding was a week away. 

In a week, her brother and her best friend would be married.

Monica had been placed in charge of all the wedding details. This was the type of activity that Monica lived for. Since she was never going to have another wedding again herself, it gave Monica a chance to relive all the excitement that planning her own wedding had given her. Rachel was glad to let her do it, just as long as she had a say in things like the flowers, and bridesmaids dress color, etc., she was more than willing to let Monica handle all the grunt work. Most of the details and planning bored her. Monica was much better organized than she was, all Rachel cared about was that the final product look picture perfect.

The wedding was in a week. Another week and Rachel would finally be her sister. She'd wanted to have Rachel for a sister since she was six. She always thought a sister would be so much better than having a brother. Especially since her brother was the favorite who could practically got away with murder with their parents, and she felt like the unwanted leftover child. It would have to have been better with a sister. Now after all these years it was finally happening.

All three girls would be happily married. They were really all grown up now!

Monica finally had her perfect family that she had dreamed her whole life about. She had a husband who she loved more than anything in the world, and children who were her life.

She had three beautiful children.

Jack and Erica, their rambuncious miracle twins, who were crawling everywhere these days; and two month old Daniel, who they had conceived against the odds and who, according to grandma Nora, was the spitting image of Chandler at that age. And when looking at her husband's baby pictures, Monica had to agree.

Phoebe was seven months pregnant with her first child and looked like she would drop any day, and soon Rachel would have a perfect little family too.

Monica was busy going through the rsvp list. Black check mark by a name meant attending, red check mark meant had to decline.

One of the red check marks made her frown.

Monica's thoughts were interrupted when Chandler suddenly and without warning sat next to her on the couch and started kissing her seductively on the neck. "All three Bing children are finally asleep for the night" he whispered as he continued kissing her neck softly. "Mon, you've done enough wedding stuff for today, what'd you say... you and me ... bedroom" he smiled suggestively. Monica turned to face him and kissed him on the lips. "I like that idea" continuing to kiss him "a lot."

Breaking the kiss and looking up in his blue eyes "I just still can't believe Joey's not coming to the wedding. I wanted all six of us to be there, we're hardly ever all together anymore. Couldn't he have had them film around his schedule?"

"Mon, I know Joey said that he can't make it because of his work schedule, but the truth is, he's never really completely gotten over Rachel. That's why he moved to Los Angeles in the first place."

He stood up and pulled Monica up by the hands. She moved her body into his and placed her head on his chest as he wrapped his arms lovingly around her petite figure. "It's just we haven't seen him since Daniel was born, we hardly ever see Phoebe, I just miss us all hanging out" she said softly, never removing her head from his chest. He kissed her softly on the head. "Mon, of all people, I wish Joey wasn't so far away, I mean your brother is my oldest friend, but sometimes he is such a dork." "Yeah Ross really can be a dork" she laughed and took her husband's hand in hers lacing their fingers together. They walked up the stairs to their room hand in hand.

* * *

She woke up in a sweat. Again. She'd been having the same nightmare for weeks now. 

She never managed to get more than twenty minutes of sleep before she would be awakened by nightmares that shecould only vaguely remember. And then no matter how much she tossed and turned, she'd never be able to get back to sleep.

Rachel lay awake in bed staring at the man who was sleeping next to her. Her fiance. In a week he'd be her husband. Her husband. That sounded so permanent. How was he able to sleep so soundly? Wasn't he scared? She knew she was. Petrified was more like it.

She was plagued with all kinds of weird doubts that made it impossible for her to get any rest. So shewas always left feeling like a zombie during the days.

What if this was all a big mistake? She tried chalking it up to last minute wedding jitters.

After all, it's not like they were rushing in to anything. They had been off and onagain for more than a decade now. They were the definition of slow.

Maybe she could talk Ross into a postponement. The idea held a lot of appeal.

But so much had been put into this wedding. Money had been spent.

And there was her daughter.

Emma. Precious little Emma.

Though she was only three and a half and didn't really understand the concept of a wedding and marriage, she knew she was finally going to have a real family. Emma was looking forward to being the flower girl. It was all she had been talking about lately. There's no way she could disappoint her daughter.

She and Rosswere the ones everyone believed were meant to be.

Despite all the breaks and the breakups and all the Chloes, their friends never waivered from this faith.

Why was she so scared?

This was her and Ross. They were supposed to end up together right?

That's what everyone always told them. Phoebe was especially gung ho about them belonging together. Okay so they hadn't exactly mated for life like Phoebe had originally predicted so many years ago, they'd both mated with dozens of other people since then, Ross even mating with others while they were together last time.

But still...

Even Joey had told her that she was going to end up with Ross when they were going out. Joey. She didn't think about him much. She tried not to.

She'd been questioning whether her future was really with Ross for a while now.

She wasn't sure they wanted the same things out of life. Their interests were worlds apart. Other than their mutual friends and their mutual daughter, they had very little to talk about. His passions bored her senseless, and he belittled hers. She knew he didn't realize how condescending he sounded. So the things that she enjoyed weren'tas high brow as his interests, but at least she respected his interests as uninterested as she may have been in sharing them.

And despite the rock that now sat on her finger, proclaiming her as taken for all the world to see, Ross remained as jealous as he had been back then, last time. Some things could be counted on no matter what.

The names and faces may have changed. It was her coworker Gavin that he would accuse her of flirting with this time instead of Mark. But the accusations were the same. They were tiring as ever.

Ross refused to believe that Gavin wasn't trying to break them up. Just because she had kissed him once, it was one little kiss, and that was _long_ before she and Ross had gotten back together.

It didn't matter to Ross that Gavin was himself engaged now, he was still convinced that Gavin was trying to poison her against him so that Gavin could go in for the kill and wipe away her tears. She tried countless times to explain to Ross that nothing was going on, but he refused to hear her. Ross went into a rage every time she had a project to work on with Gavin, which was often, but as everything there was above board, she refused to ruin her career and her friendship with her coworker to appease Ross's hysterics.

If it wasn't Gavin, there would have been some other man that would be the unwitting victim of Ross's insecurities.

Ross's solution would have been for her to quit her job. He told her when they got back together that she no longer needed to work. That he could more than afford to take care of her and Emma. But not working wasn't an option for her. Her career was important to her, as much so as Ross's was to him. If she wanted a husband to support her, she never would have walked out on her wedding years ago. She resented the fact that Ross expected her to give it all up, and was furious that he was upset when she wouldn't.

Of course for years now, if asked to describe a perfect couple with a perfect relationship that were destined to be together forever, their friends all pointed to Chandler and Monica.

But they had all said these sort of things about her and Ross long before there was a Chandler and Monica.

They wouldn't say these things about them if they weren't true right? So they had to be.

It was definitely true about Chandler and Monica. Rachel had never witnessed any two people more deeply in love than her friends.

As she lay in bed, she suddenly felt a chill and felt like everything was closing in around her.

It had to just be cold feet with the wedding fast approaching. Maybe every soon to be bride felt this way. The thought calmed her down a bit for the moment.

She'd have to talk to Monica about it.


End file.
